A Traditionalist Takes On Feminists Over Shakespeare

Published: March 1, 1990

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Ms. Stimpson said earlier feminists viewed Shakespeare as ''nicer'' to women, especially in the comedies, than other playwrights. His plays have many strong female characters, and he wrote during the era of Queen Elizabeth and was thus, presumably, mindful of the way he portrayed women in general.

The Intentions of Shakespeare

This generally pro-Shakespeare feminist criticism tends to see the playwright as consciously fashioning works, particularly the tragedies, that illustrate the evils inherent in a patriarchal society whose oppressiveness and latent violence were evident to him.

As an example, the critic Robert Kimbrough wrote in a 1983 essay that the tragedy of ''Macbeth'' lies in Macbeth's fear of allowing ''the tender aspects of his character to check those tough characteristics which are celebrated by the chauvinistic war ethic of his culture.'' Macbeth, in short, is convinced by Lady Macbeth - who divests herself of her feminine characteristics for the purpose - that if he is really a man he will kill Duncan, the king.

Similarly, in an essay on ''Romeo and Juliet,'' Prof. Coppelia Kahn of Brown University argues that Shakespeare used the feud between the Montagues and the Capulets to depict the cruelty and destructiveness of the male-dominated order, one that subordinated love to masculine pride. The feud, Professor Kahn writes, was a ''peculiar expression of patriarchal society'' that led youths to commit acts of ''phallic violence,'' following the authority of their fathers.

When Romeo duels with Tybalt and kills him, an act that leads to his own and Juliet's destruction, he is, Professor Kahn writes, forsaking the feminine influence that is his love for Juliet and obeying the brutal requirements of patriarchy.

Wishes and Perceptions

Professor Levin's argument against the feminist critics is that they are seeing both in the plays and in Shakespeare's own attitude those elements that accord with their wishes, while they ignore a great deal of contrary evidence.

He describes himself as a supporter of feminist goals and says he is a member of the National Organization for Women. But in his scholarly life he nonetheless supports the more traditional fashion of Shakespeare criticism, seeing the main characters of the tragedies as individuals struggling with their fate, not as actors in an overall drama of sexual conflict.

Professor Levin argues, among other things, that the actions that bring about the tragedies in each play are presented by Shakespeare as atypical, as aberrations. Thus, patriarchy itself as it normally functioned did not cause tragedy.

In addition, he points out, Shakespeare also wrote plays with happy endings, the comedies. ''It seems evident, then,'' he says, ''that patriarchy cannot have any necessary causal connection to misery, when it is just as capable of producing happiness.''

The Opposition of the Patriarchs

The feminist critics, he writes, simply leave out the evidence from the plays that contradicts their theories. He says, for example, that Professor Kahn's stress on the feud in ''Romeo and Juliet'' fails to explain the play for the simple reason that many of the major upholders of the patriarchal authority are ''vehemently opposed to the feud.''

Professor Levin's deepest disagreement with the feminists turns on their blindness, as he sees it, to the sense of ''resolution and catharsis'' that he believes is essential to the genre of tragedy. For tragedy to work, he says, the tragic hero must discover the cause of his unhappy ending in some fatal flaw in himself. But this, he says, is impossible in the feminist readings of Shakespeare, because none of the heroes ''seem to learn what these critics insist is the thematic lesson of the play - namely, that the concept of masculinity itself is to blame for the tragedy.''

Not surprisingly, the feminist critics disagree. ''The tragic heroes represent the values and contradictions of their societies,'' they say in the letter signed by 24 critics in P.L.M.A.. Their interpretations show ''that abnormal behavior in crisis is always an intensification of tendencies present in 'normal' behavior, that the tragedies repeatedly and poignantly ask what it is to 'be a man,' that the heroes often fantasize 'a very serious provocation by a woman' when there is none, that self-knowledge, catharsis, and the restoration of order are vexed in many of Shakespeare's plays.''

The debate will no doubt continue. New schools of feminist criticism are emerging frequently and Professor Levin has already written a critique of some of these later ideas, which, he said, he expects to be published in P.M.L.A. this year.